Rebirth 86: I use games to kick open the door to the world

Kishimoto Yoshihisa is a developer at a Japanese game company.

He created the game Hot-Blooded Hardcore based on his experience of fighting on the streets when he was young.

Most of this game is based on some of his own experiences. He is also very confident in his work and feels that this is a new track that no one can compete with him.

That was certainly true at first, and his game was released in April.

When it was first released, it gave Japanese children a slight shock because of the image of a bad boy in a hot-blooded hardcore genre.

Let them discover that being a delinquent is kind of cool.

Of course the point is to attract children to play his games.

In April, the sales of his game were quite good. During the same period, his parent company also promoted the game on the arcade platform, which also achieved very good results.

His company also rewarded him with a large amount of money, which made him very happy for a while.

Then he considered whether he should develop similar games again and continue to dig deeper into this track.

Then the Twin Dragons showed up and were more fun than him.

This is more fun because of how he feels after he actually gets started and experiences it, not how others describe it to him.

Only when he actually experienced it did he truly realize how interesting the Double Dragon was.

Compared to Double Dragon, my gameplay is really behind an era.

Two-player play, diverse attack effects, and more beautiful-looking graphics.

This game squeezes the performance of the NGS game console, and even uses additional performance-enhancing cartridges to make Double Dragon look more fun.

To be honest, if it weren't for the fact that the story background of his game was more in line with Japanese culture, and the cost of Double Dragon itself was higher due to the special cartridge, and the final price of the game was higher than his own, he felt that his games were nothing. Odds.

This gave him a strong sense of crisis.

This game developer is quite awesome.

If possible, he really doesn't want such a person to become his opponent.

It's too scary to have such an opponent.

Fortunately, the game industry is not yet saturated, and those who play Double Dragon will also want to play hardcore games.

Overall, I still have some advantages.

"President, have you seen the recent game sales announced by Famitsu?"

Kishimoto couldn't help but find his president after half a month of selling Double Dragon.

"Huh? What's wrong?"

"There is a game called Double Dragon. This game is the same type as ours. Have you heard about it?"

"Games." The president frowned, "How can I have so much time to pay attention to so many games? I spend a lot of time just finding various sources of funds for you every day."

"President, this game needs more attention. This game is different from the previous games and is still very threatening to us." Kishimoto said eagerly.

"Threat? How can there be any threat? Aren't our sales very good? How are the sales of Double Dragon?"

"It's not much different from us."

"Oh? You should really pay more attention to it, but you guys just pay attention to it. If this game has any advantages, why don't you just copy it and make it your own?"

"This method is inappropriate. Not all games are suitable for playing this way."

"Okay, okay, I understand. I will pay attention to this game later. Do you have anything else to do?"

The president was not impressed.

The gaming industry has not yet reached the stage of crazy involution. As long as you make good games, there will always be people playing them.

Now the president is more concerned about going to Ginza tonight to find a few bartenders and what kind of delicacies to eat.

Hot-blooded hardcore is really hot recently.

Kishimoto was a little depressed. He still had a sense of crisis, but his boss didn't seem to particularly care.

In fact, everyone else felt that Kishimoto's worries were slightly unnecessary.

So what if this game sells more than them? I haven’t seen other players want to play another game when they play this game.

It's not like players can only choose one of the two games, they all think Kishimoto is a bit unfounded.

But Kishimoto himself didn’t think so.

He feels that this game is so perfect. Who knows whether others will make more breakthroughs in the gameplay of the game in the future.

If you are overtaken once, you can catch up next time.

But what if people surpass it every time?

Kishimoto wanted to remind his president, but his president obviously didn't want to care about these things now.

No, you have to make your president understand the threat of this game.

Kishimoto couldn't sit still when he returned to his work station, and then began to search everywhere for details about this game and about this game company.

Then, he finally discovered something.

The development company of this game looks a bit familiar.

Real game.

real game...

Have they developed other games?

looking around!

Soon he asked others for the game records of real games released.

Contra, Squirrel Wars, Mega Man, Fire Emblem.

This is a pretty strong company!

Each game has sold hundreds of thousands and millions of copies.

Why didn't this company notice it before?

Oh no, I should have noticed it before.

He finally discovered the game Fire Emblem.

He finally remembered why he found this game company so familiar.

Isn't this the game company that my boss and several other managers ridiculed before?

Previously, this company was specially taken care of by NGS and given more promotional resources to promote the game Fire Emblem.

This move quickly aroused the dissatisfaction of a large number of large game companies. They believed that they had paid more protection fees, that is, royalties, but they were not given preferential treatment by NGS, and they were unhappy.

Later, NGS reduced the sales of Fire Emblem in order to take care of the emotions of these companies.

But even after the reduction, Fire Emblem successively achieved sales of more than 400,000, leaving many game companies silent for a long time.

After all, no one wants to think about being slapped in the face often.

But at that time, my own president and the senior managers of other companies were still a little unwilling to admit defeat.

They feel that this company has sold millions of games by selling side-scrolling games before, but Fire Emblem has only sold hundreds of thousands, which is a failure. This proves that this company actually does not do anything other than side-scrolling adventures. game.

There is no threat to a company that only produces one type of game.

These large game companies are deeply diversified.

But now, this Double Dragon has sold more than 500,000 copies in half a month, which is 100,000 copies less than the hardcore version they sold in one month.

If the follow-up is not good, it will be surpassed.

When Kishimoto saw this, he approached his boss again.

He also told his president that this company was the small overseas company that they had looked down on before. This time they seemed to have another game selling millions of copies, which was obviously very threatening.

However, Kishimoto originally thought that the president would pay more attention to this game company because of this.

But I didn't expect the president's feedback to be extremely true.

His own president's face darkened.

After all, he is a president.

He himself has forgotten that he was slapped in the face, so others should not mention it again.

When you spoke harshly about this company, you were just trying to regain some ground for yourself. It's a good thing that you are here to expose my scars again.

If you hadn't been successful in developing the passionate hardcore, he would have really wanted to kick this Kishimoto out.

In the end, Kishimoto walked out of the president's office with a confused look on his face.